ecked suit for
"everyday use" as well as for Sunday.

She was stagestruck. For that matter, so was he. They were members of
the town dramatic club and always had important parts in the plays. An
instructor came from Chicago to drill the "members of the cast," as
they were designated by the committee in charge. It was this
instructor who advised Nellie to go to Chicago for a course in the
school he represented. He assured her she would have no difficulty in
getting on the stage.

Harvey procured a position in a confectioner's establishment in State
Street and she went to work for a photographer, taking her lessons in
dancing, singing, and elocution at odd hours. She was pretty,
graceful, possessed of a lovely figure not above the medium height;
dark-haired and vivacious after a fashion of her own. As her pleased
husband used to say, she "got a job on the stage before you could say
Jack Robinson." He tried to get into the chorus with her, but the
management said, "No husbands need apply."

That was the beginning of her stage career, such a few years ago that
she was amazed when she counted back. It seemed like ten years, not
five.

She soared; he dropped, and, as there was no occasion for rousing
himself, according to the point of view established by both of them,
he settled back into his natural groove and never got beyond his
soda-fountain days in retrospect.

The next night after the little supper at Nellie's a most astonishing
thing happened. A smallish man with baby-blue eyes appeared at the
box-office window, gave his name, and asked for a couple of good seats
in Miss Duluth's name. The ticket-seller had him repeat the name and
then gruffly told him to see the company manager.

"I'm Miss Duluth's husband," said the smallish man, shrinking. The
tall, flashily good-looking man at his elbow straightened up and
looked at him with a doubtful expression in his eyes. He was Mr.
Butler, Harvey's next-door neighbour in Tarrytown. "You must be new
here."

"Been here two years," said the ticket-seller, glaring at him. "See
the manager."

"Where is he?"

"At his hotel, I suppose. Please move up. You're holding the line
back."

At that moment the company's press representative sauntered by.
Nellie's husband, very red in the face and humiliated, hailed him, and
in three minutes was being conducted to a seat in the nineteenth row,
three removed from the aisle, followed by his Tarrytown neighbour, on
whose face ther